


It Looks Quiet Down There (It's Not)

by Chosen2 (SophiaCatherine)



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Misgendering, Nonbinary Character, Prison, Suicidal Thoughts, unconnected drabbles, unintentional but still there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 01:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14706830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophiaCatherine/pseuds/Chosen2
Summary: Angel: the SeriesandBuffy the Vampire Slayerdrabbles, first posted on tumblr.Title of each chapter shows character or pairing that's the focus of the drabble.





	1. Forgiveness (Faith Lehane)

_Prompt from @jewishgarygreen on tumblr: Faith + forgiveness._

 

She doesn’t deserve it.

She’s killed, and she’s killed, and she  _liked it,_ and she would do it again without hesitation.

At least in here, locked away from the world, she can only do much damage.

But she can feel snapping necks beneath her hands, even now. 

So much power in these hands. Ancient power. Borrowed power.

( _Not yours_.)

If she sits too still, she feels it buzzing beneath her skin, that demonic magic that birthed the Slayer line. The raw power that urges its avatar-girls ever forward to seek out death upon death. The darkness that makes them more creatures of the night than their prey, that keeps them moving, hunting, killing.

( _Murderer._ )

So she keeps it busy, hitting bags in the gym, sprinting for hours and hours around the basketball court, desperate to run herself into exhaustion. 

( _Run yourself into the ground._ )

She almost wishes she were the type to volunteer in the library or help dig in the vegetable garden. 

Almost. 

( _That’s what Buffy would do._ )

Anything she does is never enough to feed the  _thing_  inside that craves the kill.

She doesn’t deserve it.

She turns on the skinny, scared girl who comes up behind her in the shower. She grabs her by the neck and pulls her up against the wall. She holds the girl’s frightened, pale blue eyes in her Slayer’s gaze, for a moment longer than she should.

( _You could end her with just a flick of your wrist_.)

And she lets the girl crumple to the ground, walking away.

No, she doesn’t deserve it.

She grabs the woman in the yard - twice her size - who makes the mistake ( _it should have been her last_ ) of coming after her with a knife, swinging down on her like this is what she was born to do.

In a moment, she has her by the wrist and 

( _just two little movements and the knife is in your hand and in her heart_ )

snapping her by the wrist so hard it breaks, she throws the woman out of her reach.

( _Now look what you did._

_Now look what they’ll do to you._

_Isn’t that always how it goes? It’s you or them, Firecracker._ )

She doesn’t deserve it.

In solitary, later, bruises shadowing the side of her head, 

( _who deserves to die more?)_

she doesn’t know the answer.

( _You’re nothing_

and Faith opens her eyes in the dark and speaks back, so quietly that she almost can’t hear herself. 

“I’m not nothing.”

Even if she doesn’t know what she  _is_ yet.)

She doesn’t deserve forgiveness.

But she’s Faith, the Vampire Slayer. 

She’s going to claw her way out and find her way home without it.

_The road to redemption is a rocky path._

_That it is._

_Think we might make it?_

_We might._


	2. Home (Fred Burkle, Fred/Gunn background)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically a ‘slight AU,’ in that Fred never used neutral pronouns on the show. I headcanon Fred as non-binary. 
> 
> Extra chapter content warnings at the end.

These are the days when Fred is almost home.

These are the mornings when Fred wakes up next to Gunn, in a real bed, under a safe roof. 

Safe. _Safe_. A friendly vampire downstairs and a weapons cabinet in the lobby. Lying next to an honest-to-god monster hunter. Who is currently running his hands through Fred’s hair and complaining about tangles.

Gunn leans over, propped up on his arm, and gazes at Fred. Fred smiles and loves him. 

It’s almost right.

Gunn lingers in bed, watching Fred getting dressed, smiling fondly. Fred catches Gunn’s eye in the long mirror and smiles back. And Gunn says, “Why don’t you wear a dress today? Maybe the blue checked one? You look so pretty in that.”

_Pretty._

These are the days when Fred drags a whiteboard into the hotel lobby and covers it with equations -- being very careful not to keep going until they’re writing on the wall  _not crazy not crazy_  -- singing quietly as they write.

“What’s that?” Angel says, looking up.

“It’s a Pylean lullaby,” Lorne says from the stairs, where he’s reading through a big book of spells.

“Is it?” Fred slipped into it so easily. They must have picked it up from the mother in the big house where they worked for a while. She would sing to her babies, doing all the feeding and changing, while Fred cleaned the nursery and watched. She was one of the better people who owned Fred in Pylea. She called Fred a nickname that meant ‘little one.’ Fred can’t remember the name now.

These are the days when Cordy walks in looking glamorous - her thick hair falling around her face, her makeup flawless. 

Fred looks down at their own overalls, their mousy hair thrown up in a messy bun, their glasses probably crooked. 

 _Cute._  Gunn calls Fred cute. He calls Cordelia beautiful. 

These are the days when Wesley smiles at Fred and calls them  _Winifred_  and Fred has to force themself not to wince.

“Fred’s in the lobby,” Fred hears Cordy say to Angel, in the office.

“Did she get her coffee?” he asks in reply. 

Fred says nothing.  _Shrink._  Small things are not noticed, not yelled at, not beaten. Not called the wrong things.

“Fred,” Angel calls out. “I left your coffee on the desk.”

“I think she found it,” Cordy says.

_She, she, she._

Sometimes -- briefly, instinctively -- Fred wants to turns around and look for someone else. 

Pylea was a terrible place. Fred was so far from home. But there were no nice clothes, no makeup, and they never had a mirror to look in. Fred wasn’t a person there - so no one ever used a wrong name. A cow doesn’t need a pronoun. Fred was barely an ‘it’.

No one in Pylea ever suggested Fred would look prettier in a dress. 

Fred shivers a little and pulls themself back.  _Name three things you can see. Hotel lobby. Whiteboard. Gunn._  

Gunn looks up from where he’s writing a message on the phone pad. He smiles at Fred. “You okay?” 

“Sure,” Fred says, forcing that familiar little laugh into their voice. They twist back and forth on the spot. _I’m fine. I’m fine._  

Gunn comes to stand next to Fred, puts his hand on their shoulder. Pretends to look at the equations, but he’s clearly trying to gauge if Fred is getting lost. “Is this for portals?” he says, gesturing at the equations.

“Yes!” Fred bounces. “Did I tell you I’m thinking we can get to specific locations with the right equations? Together with the right magic, of course. Can’t do nothing without that magic.” Fred widens their eyes and giggles - a bit too nervously.

Gunn keeps his hand on Fred’s shoulder for just a minute longer.

These are the days when Angel suggests they go out for lunch, and they go to the diner across the road and all six of them cram into a booth meant for four.

“You’re squashing me,” Gunn whines at Lorne.

“I don’t see Fred complaining,” Lorne says, clapping his big, green hand on their back.  _This is not Pylea. He’s not going to hurt you. You’re - home._  “You’re okay, aren’t you, Winifred?”

The gang always means well.

These are the afternoons when there’s not a lot of work - just a few phone calls coming through, Cordy taking them and then chatting over them with Angel. Wesley cleans out the weapons cabinet. Gunn carves arrows.

Fred stands at the whiteboard and thinks. 

At 5 p.m Gunn suggests, “Movie?” and Fred remembers that it’s Friday night. He’s asking Fred out for a date. Gunn is so sweet.

“I don’t know if I’m really in the mood, you know?” Fred says, carefully. They twist their hair.

Angel appears behind Fred. “We could all hang out?” he says. 

Fred works on forming a smile. “TV night in the basement?” They’re learning how to say what they really want, but it’s not easy.

“Fantastic,” Cordelia says, getting up. “I have no food at home and Dennis is mad at me. I’ll sort out the pizza.”

Gunn says, “Movie  _then_  video games. I wanna kick English’s ass in Sonic. We’ve got a tournament going on. I’m destroying him.”

Wesley, lounging on the lobby seats, raises an eyebrow behind his book. “I’m about to make my dramatic retaliation.”

“No way, man. Fred’s my witness. She’s keeping score, aren’t you hon?”

Wesley smiles at Fred, that look in his eyes again, the one that Fred can’t quite read, though they know it means  _good_  and  _safe_. “I’d cry bias, but that’s fair. Winfred is a scientist. Her statistical records are accurate.”

 _Safe._  

Deep in Fred’s centre, something is not. 

They clench their hands into fists. No one notices.

These are the nights when, later, waking up in the dark next to Gunn, Fred curls themself around him and just breathes. 

“You’re good, babe,” he reassures them. “It’s all good.”

These are the days when Fred is almost home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter content warnings: Brief implications of past experiences of violence (in Pylea). Fred has almost-canon PTSD. Here Fred shows some internalised ableism - the gang calls Fred ‘crazy’ in canon, and Fred doesn’t want to be that. Nonbinary people being deadnamed/mispronouned. Also, whenever I write Fred they are autistic, although I don’t say so explicitly (Fred has a lot of autistic coding).
> 
> Thought: why is ‘writing on the wall’ always coding for ‘crazy’? Fred Burkle, Barry Allen, I’m sure there are others. Down with mental illness coding based on ridiculous stereotypes!

**Author's Note:**

> Comments very welcome. I always reply.
> 
> On tumblr [here](https://sophiainspace.tumblr.com/), where I mostly flail about things from another fandom, but occasionally do share BTVS/ATS stuff too!


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